Coraggio Consulting Henrico County School Board Public Input Session, Thursday, December 18, 2025 Date: Thursday, December 18, 2025 Place: Henrico County School Board, Virginia Length: 10m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJfXB5ptdA Official meeting portal (Henrico County Public Schools, Diligent Community): https://henricoschools.community.diligentoneplatform.com/Portal/MeetingTypeList.aspx Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting. Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-25. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:03:59] SESSION NOW FOR THE 6:15 PUBLIC INPUT SESSION REGARDING THE FY27 BUDGET PRIORITIES. YOU HAVE NOT MISSED THE MONTHLY MEETING. THAT'S STILL COMING AT 6:30. SO GET EXCITED. BUT WE NEED TO DO OUR BUDGET HEARING. [00:04:14] SO IS ANYONE HERE FOR THE BUDGET HEARING THAT WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK ABOUT THE BUDGET? MS. SHERLOCK, YOU MAY GO AHEAD AND COME UP. IF YOU'LL CLEARLY STATE YOUR NAME AND THERE IS A SIGN-IN PAPER, IF YOU'LL MAKE SURE sign in specifically for the budget session um speakers are allotted three minutes to address the school board about the budget um they're to assist you um tracking your time there's a time keeping system we're here to hear from you we will not be responding to you directly but we are here to hear from you oh we're going to do a presentation about it too so you just get ready here comes mr [00:04:53] wack my my bad good evening board members and dr cashwell just wanted to provide a high level overview of our uh current budget as we feed this budget process um for for the coming fiscal year that starts july 2016. um just at a high level our operating budget for the current year is approximately 944 million dollars 764 million of which is in our general fund uh looking at our revenue sources a little over 56 percent comes from state funds in our general fund with balance [00:05:29] essentially coming from local funds you look at our spending budget in the general fund the vast majority of his instruction we can see that's over 75 percent of our expenditures budget in the current year so again this is the first step in our budget process we're seeking uh public input on priorities for the year and then on january 22nd we'll be presenting the superintendent's recommended budget for fiscal year 2027 and in february 12th meeting the school board will hold public hearing on that proposal and then on february 26th approve the recommended budget with any amendments the school board may have. The end of the budget process will conclude the April 16th [00:06:05] meeting with school board approval of the overall adopted budget, which will also include funding for salary increases. That's it. Thank you so much, Mr. Wack. Sorry to have overlooked that before. Now, Ms. Sherlock, would you like, you have three minutes to speak about the budget. I'll try to get it in. My name is Marlene Sherlock and our family lives in the Fairfield District. I'm sure you've heard the phrase set yourself up for success but ask yourselves if you've done that for this public input session on next year's budget the graphics for this agenda item is the same one you used last [00:06:40] year and the year before that and the year before that just with different numbers and it doesn't really tell us the public anything at least the covet year presentation with ezra funding gave some info on what the money could be spent on and suggested uses does it surprise you then that no one has provided any input recently so what's new what's old what are things you're required to do versus the things you've chosen to do and if we openly acknowledge that a huge portion of the budget is for personnel where's the real breakdown how much money is spent on [00:07:16] in-classroom teachers and aids versus support staff administration and the central office what if instead next year you gave us some real choices for the public to provide you real input on we can do a and b and c and they cost x y and z or we can do hij and they cost lmnop that said i'll still give you just a few thoughts even though i think your plan is to just ask for more money because isn't that what you always do ask for more money how about for once just once you [00:07:51] put forth a plan that stays within your current expenditures adjusted for inflation yes i want teachers and staff to get raises so guess what that means something might have to go and what would that be it's really hard without diving into a prior budget for example instruction sounds like teaching and teachers and salary FICA and health insurance are surely things most people recognize as being part of personnel but what about the vehicle repair postal services and almost three million dollars in supplies that also fall in that category then there's technology it literally has its own piece of the pie [00:08:29] on your graphic, but computers, software, and services are littered throughout the budget. It's really hard to discern what we're actually spending on technology. There usually aren't easy answers on how to stay within the budget. What I'm asking for is just a bit of restraint. Find the room in your budget for that extra $15 million of mechanical funding you were going to ask for, and you'd better come up with a plan to address the more than half of our schools that are off [00:09:00] track or need intense support don't depend on the county state or feds to rod in with extra funds skip the latest educational fad or add-on service to refocus on what common sense might suggest more personnel with direct instructional time for students and overall accountability for students their families and the staff make every minute in the school day count make every dollar in the THE BUDGET COUNT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. ANYONE ELSE HERE FOR BUDGET HEARING INPUT? ALL RIGHT. [00:09:39] HEARING AND SEEING NONE. THAT CONCLUDES OUR BUDGET INPUT SESSION. THE LAST ITEM ON THE WORK SESSION AGENDA WAS THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF MEETING DATES. OUR NEXT MEETING WILL BE IN NINE MINUTES RIGHT HERE. THE WORK SESSION IS HEREBY ADJOURNED. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com